December 2022 — MHCE Newsletter

WWW.MHCE.US Monthly Newsletter | 9
The Biden administration has sought to roll back
some of its predecessor's policies, including issuing
a directive in June saying Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, or ICE, will consider U.S. military
service when deciding whether to deport veterans.
The Biden administration has also been reviewing
deported veterans' requests for humanitarian parole
to reenter the United States under a program launched
last year called the Immigrant Military Members and
Veterans Initiative, or IMMVI.
But immigration advocates say the Biden
administration has not moved decisively enough.
As of June, just 16 veterans and family members
had been allowed back into the country under a
temporary status known as humanitarian parole
through the IMMVI program. Advocacy groups
have also accused the Pentagon of slow-walking
immigrant service members' citizenship applications
despite a 2020 court order nullifying the Trump
administration's more difficult application process.
“Men and women who served honorably should not
face barriers to citizenship or face deportation from
the country they served or fought to defend,” the
American Legion said in written testimony to the
House earlier this year in support of the bill. “It is
only right that we recognize their service with the
pathways to citizenship they deserve.”
Under the bill approved by the House, non-citizen
service members would have to be afforded the
opportunity to apply for naturalization as soon as
their first day of service. The bill would also call on
the Pentagon to have a Citizenship and Immigration
Services employee or someone else trained in
immigration law stationed at each military entrance
processing station to ensure non-citizen recruits
have information on naturalization opportunities.
In addition, the bill would allow deported veterans
to apply to become legal permanent residents of the
United States if they have not been convicted of a
serious crime.
And it would create a "Military Family Immigration
Advisory Committee" at the Department of
Homeland Security to review cases of veterans and
their family members facing deportation and make
recommendations, based in part on their military
record, on whether they should be allowed to stay in
the country.
A couple hundred veterans could be affected by the
bill, Takano said.
In a statement Tuesday, the White House said it
supports the bill and "recognizes the need to improve
our laws to better protect noncitizens who honorably
serve in the Armed Forces."
Republicans largely opposed the bill over what they
have described as a Biden administration-fueled
"crisis" at the U.S.-Mexico border. Republicans cite
record numbers of Customs and Border Protection
encounters with immigrants at the border and drug
seizure numbers.
The bill "creates additional carve outs to an already
broken immigration system," Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill.,
the ranking member and likely next chairman of the
House Veterans Affairs Committee, said on the floor.
"Right now, DHS can't even do their job of securing
the southern border and enforcing immigration law."
Republicans also argued that most deported veterans
have committed other crimes and so are too dangerous
to be in the country.
Many deported veterans' convictions are drugrelated,
according to a 2019 Government
Accountability Office report and some advocates
argue that traumatic events in the military and a lack
of access to resources afterward often contribute to
those crimes.